Like Minecraft Junk Jack is mostly based on creativity and mining. Getting a lot of inspiration from Minecraft the Developers for Junk Jack decided to make their own version for iOS. While Junk Jack may look like a 2-D Minecraft, Junk Jack and Minecraft are two different games with the same concept.

Gameplay

In Junk Jack your sole purpose is to get materials for building in any way possible, whether that be mining ores, cutting down trees, or killing animals. There are many biomes in Junk Jack such as a Jungle biome, forest biome, Egyptian biome, Mayan Biome, and a Hell biome. When you first create a world you'll be in the forest biome where you can immediately start by punching trees and collecting some wood.

In Minecraft some beginners have commented on how annoying it was to play the game since there was no guide to help you with the game, luckily in Junk Jack you have a guidebook that teaches you how to play and how to craft some tools. As you go on playing the game you'll find some notes which tell you how to craft items you didn't know how to before. Like minecraft if you want to only build and not fight those pesky monsters then you can turn on peaceful mode where no monsters can spawn.

The only thing that I felt was missing in Junk Jack is bosses. Terraria has them and Minecraft just got them and adding bosses added huge amounts of fun since they added more difficulty to the game and they dropped some rare loot. Another problem was the Hell biome while you'd be expecting lava and such, Junk jack only has red blocks called infernal blocks and no lava. The last problem is bugs, many people have been reporting about their loss of world data and items. Luckily the devs have kind of fixed the problem by allowing the players to backup their items. In one instance when I happened to lock my screen while the world was generating; I lost my items, but thanks to my backup I got my items back. While this may solve the item problem it does not fix the corrupt world problem. Aside from those things Junk Jack is a very good game and very fun to play. Junk Jack takes all the good aspects of Minecraft and adds some of its own to make the game highly enjoyable.

Graphics

If you were to compare Junk Jack to Minecraft, graphics wise the best description for Junk Jack would be Minecraft in 2-D. Junk Jack has all the blocky features of Minecraft and made them into great looking 2-D item. Minecraft looks like it has horrible 3-D graphics Junk Jack has beautiful 2-D graphics even better than Terraria.

The controls were more effective than I thought it would be on a small iPod touch screen. To move Jack all you have to do is simply swipe in the direction you want to lave and if you want to jump just simply swipe upwards or just let Jack do the jumping with autojump. A lot of people have been complaining about the controls by saying it was unresponsive and difficult to use, but in actuality The controls are the exact opposite of that.

Sound

While Junk Jack may be strong in every other section it lacks some tiny things in the music section. Junk Jack has great music, but the tracks plays at odd intervals. The music will start in odd places like at the middle of the day and stop abruptly or sometimes it won't play at all. Although if you don't want to listen to the music you could play your own, it would have been nice to even play the Terraria soundtracks. That's not to say the music that's in Junk Jack isn't superb, but since it doesn't play often the player can't hear its goodness and fully appreciate it.

Conclusion

One of the best things about Minecraft was its Building aspect and now with Junk Jack you can do exactly that. For $2.99 it's surprising how long you can play the game and with steady updates coming a lot the way, Junk Jack will continue to get better and better all for just $2.99

Ratings (scale of 1 to 5):

Graphics: - 5 - Very good graphics that look good in retina displaySound: - 3.5 - Good music but doesn't play oftenControls: - 5 - Simple and effective controlsGameplay: - 4 - Vey long lasting hours of gameplay but has some annoying bugs

Playing Hints and Tips:

-concentrate on getting wood and dirt and quickly build your self a makeshift house for the night and make some weapons in case monsters attack you.

-During the day look for coal lumps which look like black lumps and then collect some wood and craft torches so you can see during the night